A comparatively young human subspecies, showing the two sub-subspecies of the philosophical sceptic and the scientific sceptic, the sceptic is proud of questioning and challenging each and every phenomenon and much more so each and every view of the world that is attempting to explain anything outside statistically or experimentally proven material realities. (If he would study avant-garde of natural science, all seemingly fixed knowledge would tumble to pieces very quickly. That’s why he seldom goes that far. Of reasons to be established he cannot afford to do so.) Material reality is only a fourth part of the zodiac, which represents the world. The endeavour to try and explain the whole world from this fragment is obviously utterly stupid; still it is the thinking model of our times. As soon as someone will shout out: “See, the Emperor has no clothes on! “ – everyone will be able to see it.

Scepticism is the means, which is used by a disoriented immature mind to establish a facade to cover up mental cowardice and anxiety towards life. The sceptic will never truly go for anything, will never try to find out about life with the passion of wanting to know truth. If I make mistakes – life will tell me. If I am wrong – I am certain to find out, as long as I am a passionate lover of life and don’t hide away in intellectualism and/or scepticism. The sceptic needs to stay dissociated and cannot afford to plunge into life. Scientific criticism is the perfect excuse to adopt that stance as a general attitude towards life.

Astrologically the aspect of Mercury-Saturn, IF becoming a symptom, MAY result in scepticism. Mercury being the earthly pendant of Saturn (Capricorn/Gemini), is supposed to implement to material reality Saturn’s determination of the Gestalt that time is going to bring. The first quadrant of Aries, Taurus and Gemini does itself not possess life nor consciousness. It is merely the material result of those.

If this transfer is not taking place, if Mercury is not getting any influx from its heavenly pendant Saturn of the 4th quadrant, Mercury becomes merely empty functionality instead of being the “extremities” of the Gods. Mercury’s task is to implement heavenly will into material reality. If it does not do so, a frantically hopeless and aimless repetition of empty functions is resulting.

One of these functions is intellect. Intellect is supposed to put into logic, what is found in other realms of spirituality, consciousness and awareness. Intellect by itself is nothing but a tool. No more, no less. If a person like the sceptic is utterly depending on intellect and corresponding material functions of the 3rd house for life-orientation, one could very well call this is a deficiency in intelligence. – As I mentioned before, it is in reality an immature mind that has experienced a halt in development and has not had the chance to evolve beyond its puberty stage.

The true thinking process that is connected with consciousness, is taking place in the 3rd quadrant. This thinking process is based on Gestalten, which one could describe as a kind of images, which are existing independently of man, whose existence was common knowledge, before the great philosophical dispute on “nominalism” of scholasticism banned them and with them man’s connection to heaven. This kind of thinking process consists basically in assembling these Gestalten/images that are evoking certain aspects of consciousness according to the individual 3rd quadrant. With the help of the 6th house we perceive and become aware of this consciousness, and it is Mercury in the 3rd house that transposes this consciousness and awareness to logic by the means of intellect. So it becomes very clear, that intellectualism that is lacking the Gestalt/image/consciousness part of the thinking process by limiting it to the logic of the 3rd house is actually a form of deficiency of intelligence.

The emotional background for such a development usually lies in a strong feeling of rejection in childhood, caused either by the child’s own parents, or by a situation where the child is not growing up in the family to which it is by instinct and nature belonging. Often someone else, or some kind of institution is taking care of the child, who misses the specific orientation, which only the surroundings of the family he or she is born into could provide. You all know of course, that constellations, ACs, MCs etc. run in the family. The child is supposed to get its orientation from there, not from strangers, may they be as nice as they can. The child’s mercury is not getting the influx from its Saturn and the child feels emotionally strongly estranged and rejected. The child’s destiny (Saturn) of BEING with someone is replaced by the regulation (Mercury) of being BROUGHT UP by someone. The child’s way to compensate for that is to change priorities and to utterly rely on the intellect, a strategy that seems to be safe. This dominance of intellect may over time result in intellectualism and scepticism as a make up for emotional anxiety and disorientation. It functions as a barrier between the individual and life itself that seems too insecure in its stream of time bringing ever-changing experiences.

One important remark: When using the term scepticism I do not refer to common sense. A healthy human being is not supposed to believe everything uncritically. But it takes the whole human being, including intelligence, intuition and knowledge of human nature to come to sound judgements. And if we find out they are wrong we adjust. By all means astrology has had to discard far less theories or methods than natural sciences have to discard every day. It is a well-known fact that the scientific truth of today tomorrow – that is in a few years’ time – will be mildly smiled at or even condemned as dangerous nonsense. That does not happen to any relevant extent in astrology. Not even the change to a Copernican model of the world did invalidate basic astrological knowledge.